


not down the aisle but up the stairs.

by reckonedrightly



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, Implied Sexual Content, Pre-A Scandal in Belgravia, Pre-Canon, Romance, Writing Exercise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 14:35:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reckonedrightly/pseuds/reckonedrightly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“...and recently ended the marriage of a prominent novelist by having an affair with both participants separately.” Irene Adler takes her fun where she can find it; as much as she can, with all the natural greed of someone well aware of the dangers inherent in being alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not down the aisle but up the stairs.

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to the glorious mobiustrip for her feedback, companionship and horrible dark secrets.
> 
> The title is (slightly paraphrased) from Jeanette Winterson's 'Written On The Body': "I've been through a lot of marriages. Not down the aisle but always up the stairs."
> 
> While there are no graphic sex scenes to warn for, there are fairly explicit references and mentions scattered throughout. Now, on with the show.

 

 

_“...and recently ended the marriage of a prominent novelist by having an affair with both participants separately.”_

**14 June 2009.**

“I’ve read all of your books.”

It’s true. Valentine Harper’s name is striped five times across a section of Irene Adler’s bookshelves.

Irene has only seen her frozen in photographs before—gazing in greyscale from inside a book cover or glowering behind sunglasses in the occasional pap shot, tightly hand in hand with Samantha Hamilton, professional writer’s wife. Irene, featured in similar glossy rags herself, has long since built up a tolerance to that cold water shiver of ‘oh—they’re real’ that comes from meeting someone famous. Valentine looks up from her drink and fixes her with a stare and makes that silvery excitement rise up in her all the same.

 _She moves_ , Irene thinks, enjoying it greatly.

Valentine does indeed move. A slow energy pulses through her. She has short dark hair and long dark eyelashes like shadows on her dark olive skin, and is not pushing forty so much as ramming it with her shoulder and strolling straight on through. She’s sitting at the side of her own book launch while Samantha charms everyone in sight and darts between guests like a glittery hummingbird, and as Irene watches she stretches out and leans back, taking her time with her answer. “You look the type,” she says.

Irene waits. She always looks like _some_ type, after all. A new shade of lipstick brings a whole new classification. Pink for a girl and red for a woman. “I’m sure there’s a punchline,” Irene prompts.

“My books,” Valentine says, fingers drumming sharply on the table beside her for want of a cigarette, “are utter shit.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Do you.”

Irene has always enjoyed watching other people’s first impressions of her unfold. She can see, looking into Valentine’s eyes, how Valentine sees her; towering on black heels (Irene is 5”4’; no one realises this) with a stark, ever-moving pout. Diamonds interrupting her throat. A bit on the side to somebody; a star to somebody else. Very little when left alone.

“Yes,” says Irene, and surges onto the edge of the table in a ripple of silk, lifting her feet from the floor. Valentine snatches her hand away, blinking, though her face remains impassive, and Irene’s eyebrows arch. Her shoulders move forwards; Valentine’s eyes flicker downwards to how the motion pushes her breasts together, then back up. Irene’s smile goes supernova. “You’re a proper old-fashioned novelist, right down to the self-loathing core. Do you ever scrawl for hours and then set it all on fire?”

The very corner of Valentine’s mouth twitches. She has a tiny scar on her upper lip; it moves in the most fascinating ways as she pointedly doesn’t smile, and Irene wishes the I-prefer-poetess behind her would _shut up_ because she feels like she’s missing something every time she takes notice of anything in the room besides the woman in front of her. “Every Thursday. What are you, a model? Did Samantha invite you? ”

“No and no. I’m here with Irene Adler. Drinking problem?” Irene suggests.

“No,” Valentine says, lifting her glass. “I’m very good at it. Who’s Irene Adler?”

“I’m Irene Adler. I’m hurt. But then I imagine you don’t read tabloids.”

“Morally opposed.”

“Mm, I bet. So. Returning to your talents. I suppose you’re very good at smoking, too? Atmospherically, I hope. I think you light up and then you torch your manuscripts—on very _good_ Thursdays.”

The scar on Valentine’s upper lip moves again. Irene wonders how she got it and decides never to ask; she probably fell off her bike when she was seven and she doesn’t want facts getting in the way of things. An inexplicable scar will do very nicely. “Only proper.”

“Yes,” Irene murmurs, sounding satisfied, as if Valentine is doing very, very well, coming up a near nine out of ten, jolly good. Valentine’s eyes narrow. And then Irene seems to come to a point; suddenly, all that vicious vitality ceases to orbit her; instead, it’s aimed right at Valentine. “Rocky marriage?” It’s the first real question she’s asked. Valentine stares at her and the light Irene’s diamonds are scattering catches her gin and her wedding ring. She laughs—Irene learns later that Valentine smiles when she’s amused—she laughs and she doesn’t answer.

 

 

*

“It was only after we had slept together three times that I realised I didn’t just want her because she was beautiful.

It was a Tuesday morning, and she was up at the crack of dawn. I said _don’t_ something—don’t go or don’t stay or don’t do anything insane, something along those lines, but I knew she wouldn’t listen. She smiled at me from the end of the bed. Her smile looked naked without lipstick; not stripped, embarrassed naked, but naked like Greek statues are. She picked up her phone from the clothes she’d taken off the night before and said, “Sleeping with writers is such a stupid idea. I can see you picking out similes for me.”

“Jesus, you never switch off, do you? It’s six in the morning.”

“You think there’s anything to switch off? _That’s_ interesting.” She was already half dressed. “Write a poem for me.”

“I’m a novelist.”

“Write a novel for me, then. And compare me to a Greek statue. That’d be hilarious. ” ”

— **_“The Self-Portrait”_ , V. Harper, published 2014.**

 

 

*

**15th June, 2009.**

“So she’s—”

“A professional dominatrix,” Samantha says, laughing over her teacup and curling up tighter, wriggling her toes delightedly into the sofa cushions. “She’s been in all the gossip rags. I don’t know how she even got in. _I_ didn’t invite her.”

Valentine snorts. Her eyes are closed, and her head is in Samantha’s lap; the heat of Samantha’s thigh is warming her cheek. Her fingers are in Val’s hair, fingertips making circles on her scalp, travelling over the delicate shell of her ear and then sneaking quickly down behind it, making Val’s lips quirk. “Total madwoman, like I said.”

“ _Amazing_.” Her fingers brush Valentine’s cheek. “She was awfully fond of you.”

“You were watching?”

“Well. I was worried you weren’t enjoying yourself.”

“Sam,” Valentine says, opening her eyes and pushing herself up a little to look at her wife. “I just published my fifth book. Count ‘em. Five. I was the focus of a book launch apparently important enough for some social-climbing succubus to gatecrash, and you were—”

She stops, because Samantha’s kissing her, and she can taste tea on her lips. Her fingers sneak behind Valentine’s ear again, and they kiss again, and again, short, sweet, married kisses, and then Valentine says, “You were really, really beautiful, when you were—last night, and I never,” kiss, “got to say,” another kiss, again, and then Samantha gasps because Valentine’s cold hand is up Samantha’s House of Fraser jumper.

Later, Samantha goes to run a bath. Valentine washes her hands in the other bathroom and takes her phone from her pocket. There are four unread messages.

Rise and shine, darling.

How are you this morning?

I’m fine, since you didn’t ask.

If you don’t answer, it’s harder for me to tell you that we don’t have to sleep together ever again.

Valentine looks at the last message for so long that her phone screen fades delicately to black and locks itself up, and then she puts her phone back in her pocket and goes to be a half-decent wife, because Samantha is asking for her to fetch some fresh towels from the linen cupboard, please, and does she want to come and join her?

Her phone buzzes just as she’s putting out towels. She plucks it out of her pocket automatically and feels panic spark in her, because Sam is right there, naked and fussing about shampoo, her golden brown hair spread over her bare shoulders, trying to get her bathwater exactly right.

She unlocks the phone (it would be far too conspicuous to put it back without reading the text—if anyone thinks that way, if anyone watches). She half-looks at the message. And she puts the phone away. It’s only later, when she’s said that no, she’ll shower later, and excused herself from the bathroom, that she can actually let herself fix the words in her mind and let them sink into her.

Call me if you need me.

 

 

*

“In part, the nerves are what people have affairs for; sweaty palms and feeling like you’ve got something that doesn’t have to be shared between two people ‘til death do us part. I loved being married to Sam. I just didn’t always love being married.”

— **_“The Self-Portrait”_ , V. Harper, published 2014.**

 

 

*

**30th June 2009.**

The smoke from Samantha Hamilton-Harper’s cigarette spirals up towards the Rothko on the wall which really pulls the room together. She takes drags in sharp, quick, birdlike movements, flicking it neatly into a chrome ashtray and typing one-handedly on her laptop.

She’s emailing Daddy, who is Peter Hamilton, who is sitting in his study with the smoke from his cigar drifting straight up and slowly doing awful things to the antique plasterwork. He’s tapping out an email of his own to a long-time business partner and lifelong friend—James Macmillan.

And James Macmillan is sitting in a cafe, his hand trembling on his phone. He’s too big for the corner he’s pressed himself into, a wide, suited man with a hard face made harder by tension. His phone looks flimsy in his hand. There are two words on the screen. He’s a slow texter. where are

Irene Adler has surprised him by not wearing stilettos. The blocky heels on her boots click differently, and so he notices her a second later than he should. His stomach drops and he puts his phone back into his pocket. His hands are clammy. Fortunately, she doesn’t like to shake. She smiles at him; she’s a sharp black slash against all the tasteful, soft greens which their meeting place is decorated in.

“Hello,” she says, sitting down. “What have you got for me?”

His lip curls. “You’re—”

“Yes,” she says quite calmly, “I am. Now. What have you got for me?”

 

 

*

**1st June 2012.**

“She started telling the truth surprisingly early—not, admittedly, that she actually told many lies. She just let them inhabit everything she did. Watching her hemline slide up as she sat down, you’d find yourself knowing that she had been disowned; seeing her finish off her champagne slightly quicker than everybody else at the party, you’d immediately realise her parents had died before she could make amends; the brush of her fingers across the side of your hip as you passed her in a hotel corridor would alert you abruptly and mysteriously to the fact that she had probably attended a conservatoire.

At first, she would text me to come and meet her somewhere—not often the same place twice. It gave a sense of almost accidental intimacy, as if we’d just stumbled into each other. Sometimes, she would call me to the places she took clients just after the clients themselves had left, and I’d have her while she was still dripping sweat, not quite peeled out of whatever costume she’d donned; she’d shove my head between her legs and sometimes she’d come in seconds. Another lie she never technically told was that the relationship—the affair—was one in which we openly used each other. I would sit there, still in my clothes, with her coming down from her climax in an anonymous hotel armchair, her hand in my hair, and while I listened to her breathing slow down, I would let myself use the excuse she was supplying for me—that we were just sleeping together.

We were in a hotel room. She hadn’t been with a client—she preferred to take them to the places she demurely referred to as her playspaces, momentarily dropping into a language of codewords and euphemisms I wasn’t totally familiar with—but she had been with a man. I could smell as much. Later, after we’d both showered and she was wrapped up in towels on the bed, her hair dripping onto the sheets, I remarked, “I thought you were gay.”

“I am,” she said, watching me with a half smile as I waited for the tiny hotel kettle to boil, next to the strangely doll-house-y collection of UHT milk, sugar sachets, little foil parcels of butter. “But I’m also a businesswoman.”

“I thought your pro-domme stuff wasn’t—...?”

“No sex, you’re right. And I wouldn’t like to do any escorting. I’d exhaust myself, sleeping with men all the time. But I don’t mind doing it for business occasionally—not the cash-in-hand sort, but the sort where a certain gent thinks I’m completely in love with him and is ready to shower me with gifts. Oh—just English Breakfast for me, darling. None of your herbal nonsense.”

I shook my head, switching out her teabag; Samantha always drank chamomile. I’d been running on autopilot. “That’s business?”

“Business is making people want to give you things, that’s all.”

“And art?” I inquired.

“Art is how you do it.”

“Integrity?” A smile was pulling at my mouth.

“Integri- _what_ , dearest?”

“Love. Give me Irene Adler on love.”

“Love,” Irene said, “is something people try to control too much. Kettle’s boiled.” I blinked, and didn’t ask her what she’d meant—in fact, I think she mentioned the kettle in order to give me something to concentrate on, an excuse for not continuing that line of inquiry. I picked it up, went to pour it into her mug, and the lid came loose, splashing water and steam over my hand.

“Bollocks!” I yelled, and Irene came rocketing off the bed trailing towels with no _are you alright_ s or _oh my god_ s. She grabbed me and marched me into the still steamed-up bathroom, turning on the cold tap and shoving my hand beneath it. When I’d stopped swearing I started laughing, more out of pain than amusement, though I was amused—and she joined in, leaning her forehead against mine. “Don’t mock me,” she purred, smiling.

“Integri-what, she says, rushing to nurse my ills.”

“Quiet, you. It’s automatic.”

“ _Really_.”

“Runs in the family. My mother was the hardest-boiled nurse the world has ever seen,” Irene chuckled. She didn’t say it like it was an accident, rushing out in the sudden closeness brought about by the steamy bathroom and the cold tap spitting at us both. It sounded quite open. She still had one towel just about clinging to her, and I started laughing again—at the whole situation, not at her, though she was at the heart of it. It was a strange sort of affair we were having, I realised.

Keeping my hand under the cold tap, she told me—in tones which were almost soothing, her mouth pressed to my hair and both of us reflected back at each other by the mirror above the sink—that she was trained in first aid; she’d been on the required courses, and kept up to date with them. She knew how to perform CPR. She explained that it was necessary for her work—she didn’t want any clients dying strapped to her St Andrew’s, after all. I relaxed against her, the cold stinging my scalded fingers, and listened to her talk about the art behind the business, or the business behind the art.

“So you’re all fur coat and no nonsense,” I said, and she started laughing again.

Despite the way she blotted her lipstick implying that she was born abroad—New York, perhaps, or was her mother Dutch?—she was born in Sheffield, the child of a greengrocer and a nurse. The flicker of her fingers at my hip as she moved by me notwithstanding, she left school at sixteen—though I learnt that she had, in fact, gone to drama school in London afterwards. She had four GCSEs, though my assumption that she was widely-read, based primarily on the particular way she put necklaces on, held more or less true. Her voice, at least, suggested something almost true; her accent wasn’t fake, she’d just trained herself into it. By the time I met her, she didn’t have to think about it. But you’d never know the truth to look at her. I only know it because she told me—in fragments. She would murmur bits of truth into the back of my neck or my shoulder, like my body could keep her secrets for her.”

Valentine looks down at what she’s written, and thinks about Irene’s story. Live fast, die young. Get in the glossy magazines, get mysteriously murdered. She drums her fingers on the table. She wants a cigarette.

She peels two pages slowly from her notebook, thinks about crumpling them up, but then just puts them to the side.

Maybe.

“Irene Adler was born in New Jersey.”

Maybe not.

 

 

*

**November 2009.**

“‘Except the trouble with a disguise is that it is always a self-portrait’—Ms Harper, you are a plagiarist,” Irene announces, wandering into the hotel bathroom with her dressing gown falling off her shoulders and a spiral writing pad in her hands; most of the pages are covered in Valentine’s cramped handwriting. Black biro, fine lined paper, always the same brand of notebook. Chapter headings in green. Notes in red. Valentine, soaking in the bath with a cigarette illegally in her mouth, doesn’t open her eyes, but does frown.

“You’re reading my first drafts now?”

“Well, if you won’t burn them like a proper tortured novelist—”

“—you’ll torture me until I do.”

“Oh, dear. Finishing each other’s sentences. Soon we’ll be making trips to Ikea.” Irene sits on the side of the bath, just beside Valentine’s precariously balanced ash tray, and trails a finger in the water, flicking foam at her lover. “Still, you’ve stolen my quote. Apparently, the famous Valentine Harper believes plagiarism begins at home.”

They don’t have a home. They have this hotel suite in New York, though, where Valentine is (to Samantha) taking a break from real life to concentrate on writing and (to Irene) taking a break from writing to concentrate on her, or rather them, in all sorts of creative positions. Valentine plucks her cigarette from her lips, flicks ash— “Didn’t Zelda Fitzgerald say that?”

“Originally.”

“Going to pay a cabbie to let you ride on top of a taxi?”

“I think I could make one let me for free.”

“I’m afraid you’re more of a Bosie to my Wilde, Irene.”

“Well,” says Irene, “whatever gets you off.”

 

 

*

**25th December 2009.**

Irene spends Christmas in London working. Not her above-board work, which tends not to occupy her on Christmas day, but the dishonest little side schemes she’s built up around it. She sends Merry Christmasses to five different men. Phones go off in the middle of Christmas dinners; unfaithful husbands scramble to check their messages, grit their teeth on their turkey, smiling fixedly under paper crowns.

In a Belgravia townhouse she’s trying out for a few months until she heads for Switzerland with a banker she knows, she pops a cork like it’s wronged her. The wine goes off like a gunshot, fountaining up into the air.

She hasn’t sent any texts to Valentine. That was the condition. The month in New York for the promise of a Christmas with Samantha. A love affair by negotiation. Val-and-Sam are spending their bartered-for Christmas at Peter Hamilton’s house in the country. Irene snorts, pouring herself a glass. She hasn’t bothered to turn on the lights in her kitchen; there’s still enough light to see by. Blue shadows slosh over the counter. She should get someone to live with her while she’s living here, she thinks.

Christmas is a time for family, which means everyone makes the attempt to be wholesome; it’s time to put away all the vices and go to Church if that’s your thing even though Sunday is usually your day for a lie in; it’s time to pretend your marriage is happy and meet the in laws and go to houses in the country. Irene knows for a fact that Valentine abhors the country.

It’s a matter of bad organisation, she has to admit, annoyed at herself. She’s usually always got at least a very casual lover handy. She thinks the month with Valentine probably disrupted a few too many of her plans.

She brings the bottle with her when she returns to the yellow light of her sitting room and sets it by the sofa, anticipating the need for a second glass shortly. Outside, London is going bluer and darker, lit up in squares by glowing windows and flickering comfort telly. People’s heads are in other people’s laps, hands are in hands. Everyone is just the right level of hazily drunk, she thinks, stabbing one of the keys on her phone so sharply that her crimson thumbnail folds under itself and snaps.

It’s important that people feel able to put her away. She needs to be a hideable secret; fantasies, after all, should come when called. With her clients—the ones who aren’t worth anything but their fees—this is purely business sense. Irene is professional, considerate, discreet; it says as much on her website, and it’s true when it needs to be true. She likes to be what they want. With her _friends_ —the men who think she’s more than their domme or the ones she takes from another angle, the criminals and the politicians—it’s a matter of making them think they’re in control, until the moment when she pulls that out from under them and says something like, “What have you got for me?”

The wine is sharp and sparkly on her tongue. She wonders if she’s ever going to ask Valentine something like that—but of course she’s not. Valentine can’t give her anything, not really. Money, fine, but Valentine’s not powerful. She doesn’t tend to sleep with powerful people for the joy of sleeping with them. It makes things complicated.

She takes a gulp of wine, and picks up her phone.

James Macmillan doesn’t technically have a family, not since his wife left him, and so now he spends Christmas with Peter and Delia Hamilton, and their daughter, and her—well, you know, her partner. Civil partner. Wife. Whatever it is they call each other—James gets embarrassed and stumbles over the terminology, though he thinks it’s because Samantha’s his goddaughter and it’s strange, watching her lean against—the woman she lives with. It’s not what he’d have wanted for her, that’s it.

His phone goes off while they’re all reclining back after the pudding. Valentine is trying to argue Delia into pulling a cracker. Maybe she’s not so bad. Peter’s cracking up. Peter likes Valentine; they’re both, James thinks, warm and brandy-drunk and inclined to be fond, the good kind of bastard. Not what he’d have wanted for Sam. But—apart from that.

Horrible things, phones. Always buzzing and dinging and begging for your attention. His goes off again, reminding him he hasn’t checked the message that’s just arrived—probably O2. “Get that, stop it beeping at us,” Peter groans.

“Yeah,” Valentine drawls, “name and shame, who the hell’s texting you _now_?”

Good kind of bastards. James smiles and pulls his phone from his pocket. The smile slips from his face.

“It’s no one.” Peter’s staring at him. His mouth is dry. He feels abruptly very, very ill.

Run, says the text. In London, Irene puts her phone away and wonders if there’s such a thing as ordering in Christmas pudding.

 

 

*

“In the new year, Samantha kept crying.

At dinner, she’d start crying. During sad adverts for pet charities, she’d start crying. During boring adverts for sofas, she’d start crying. When I was trying to write, she’d start crying. When she was trying to sleep, she’d start crying.

I pretended to be asleep a lot, when she cried at night. I don’t for a moment think she believed me, but I was paralysed with fear—and bewildered. I didn’t know Samantha could cry in front of people. When she asked me to marry her, she said, “If you wouldn’t mind,” and when she broke her leg falling down the steps of our new house, she said, “I’m sorry, I need an ambulance.” But there she was, muffling her howls—because she didn’t cry quietly, not at night—into the pillow, and I was shutting my eyes as tight as I could and feeling her slip beyond my reach totally and permanently.”

— **_“The Self-Portrait”_ , V. Harper, published 2014.**

 

 

*

**March 2010**

Much later, Valentine’s Wikipedia page (under the sub-heading ‘relationship with Irene Adler’, oft-criticised for giving needless detail) will say that Irene became attached to Valentine’s inner circle in early 2010.

Valentine starts taking her out to dinner, lets her in bit by bit. She’s getting careless; all of a sudden Samantha has other things to be unhappy about, and they take up a lot of her attention. Officially, there’s talk of her writing Irene’s biography; in bed, Irene laughs about it, and tells her all the things she’s not allowed to tell anybody. Everybody’s losing their grip on their secrets. The tipping point comes when Irene sleeps with Valentine’s friend Lucy, who writes bodice rippers and is delightfully unromantic.

“Biography aside, has Valentine threatened to immortalise you in fiction yet?” Lucy asks, rubbing red marks on her wrists and grinning. She’s not even slightly married.

“Only with her eyes,” Irene chuckles, taking her wrists and smoothing over the marks with her thumb, raising them to her mouth.

“The Valentine stare, hm? _I_ could put you in a book if you like.”

“Sounds lovely. The Dominatrix Tamed. Give me a rich husband.”

“You know there’ll have to be a scene in which you give into your desire to be loved and dominated by him.”

“Fab. I should be afraid as he ties me up—”

“—because you’re inexplicably a virgin—”

“—because, yes, as you know—” Irene flicks her tongue at Lucy’s fingertip “—I’m a virgin, but I should of course love it in the end.”

“And then you get married and give him two perfect children. You live happily ever after.” Lucy takes her wrists away from Irene and falls back onto the bed. Irene follows, and they move companionably close, forehead to forehead. More like teenagers on a sleepover than lovers, which is because they aren’t really lovers at all. “You know Samantha’s going to work it out,” Lucy tells her. “She’s not doing well, is she?”

“You’ve known her longer than I have.”

“And you’re better with people than I am.”

“She’s not doing well,” Irene confirms, “and Val’s not doing well with her not doing well, which is the only real reason I know anything about it.” Lucy snorts into the spot under Irene’s chin, burrowing down. Irene hums and throw an arm companionably over her. “I don’t know if Samantha’s ever felt anything she can’t control before.”

“She’s in love with Valentine.”

“I think marrying someone is probably the best way to try and control being in love with them, don’t you?”

“You and Valentine are bloody made for each other. You’re always saying impressive nonsense.”

“Well. It’s important to be impressive,” Irene sighs, closing her eyes and sliding a hand up Lucy’s ribcage. Valentine’s stops lower on her than Lucy’s does. She finds herself getting lost in the gap between them. “She knows I sleep with other people. I don’t believe in cheating. It doesn’t do anything for me.”

“Would you mind? If she slept with someone. Me.”

“No,” Irene says honestly, mouth against Lucy’s forehead. She opens her eyes, and imagines Valentine’s legs locked up with Lucy’s—Lucy leaving the kind of scratches Irene likes to leave, Lucy biting where Irene likes to bite. “No, I wouldn’t mind at all.”

“Because Val would never fall in love with me?” Lucy asks.

“Oh, don’t sell yourself short,” she yawns, throwing a leg over Lucy and settling her foot against the back of her calf, which isn’t anything like the back of Valentine’s calf; Irene finds herself suddenly grateful, and sets about categorising other parts of Lucy which are nothing like Valentine.

“Ooh, handsy,” Lucy hums into her neck. “Handy and avoidant.”

“Aren’t you just sharp enough to cut yourself,” Irene says, in tones of a fond goodnight, very glad she met her.

And next there is Jacob Goodall, who is Samantha’s friend more than Valentine’s, and who Irene almost knows. His brother is important in the publishing world; Jacob and Valentine’s sole point of common ground is their mutual hatred of him. Irene—invited by Lucy—leans back and listens to them bounce vitriol off one another and doesn’t once mention that Leo Goodall likes to lick her toes of a Saturday afternoon. Once a month, always six pm on Saturday. She’s fairly unmoved by the stories; Leo is a careful and considerate client, who pays on time and who asked if it would be alright to send her a Christmas gift; when she said yes, he bought her a rather nice perfume, accompanied by a thoughtful card. He minds boundaries. That’s the main charge against him, actually; he’s conservative and pedestrian, Valentine and Jacob complain; he’s boring, he’s obsessed with rules.

On and off, there are Deepak and Cass Jhadav, whose marriage is working and who are therefore only taken in small bites; Samantha invites them over on nights when Cass is working, or when Deepak is visiting his family without her; when they come together, presenting a quietly united front, easy in each other’s company, Irene can see it makes her nervous and sad.

Samantha isn’t doing well. Irene thinks that her slow slipping into the group has upset her, because this little social scene she’s suddenly encouraging with all her might is something Samantha wants for herself and for Valentine; friends who come over for good wine and nibbles, friends who can say things which will keep them both happy—a context to put their marriage in. She’s trying to build a foundation when the house is already rotting from the roof down.

At Cass and Deepak’s house, Irene leans her cheek against the wooden grain of a bathroom door, and hears Samantha crying quietly. She listens for a few moments, and then steps away and raps smartly on the door with the hand holding her evening bag, sending crescent moon reflections bouncing off the sequins. The sound of people talking in the sitting room is just audible, words tripping over each other in a stream of unintelligible murmuring interrupted by the chime of glasses.

“Val?” Samantha asks after a moment, her voice carefully steady.

“Sorry,” Irene says, “no.”

Silence rolls in. “I’ll be out in a moment,” Samantha says finally. She sounds muted.

“I have a glass of wine,” Irene informs her quietly, “and makeup.”

There’s a long pause before Irene hears the click of the lock and the door opens slightly, revealing a strip of Samantha. Her eyes are a deep wet blue, pinky-grey around the edges where she’s cried through her mascara. “Why are you—...?”

“I don’t like Sauvignon Blanc,” Irene offers, her eyebrows arching up. Samantha gives a weepy laugh, clapping her hand over her sad, crooked mouth. Irene raises her evening bag for her observation. “Your mascara’s everywhere, dear. I promise not to make you up like me.”

With a sniffle, her mouth crumpling then straightening to a delicate, trembling line, Samantha opens the bathroom door properly. Irene holds out the glass of wine and she takes it, holding it with both hands clasped around the bowl. Irene puts her bag beside the sink and opens it up, taking out a black makeup case and unfastening it with calm, businesslike movements.

“You must think I’m mad,” Samantha says unsteadily.

“No,” Irene replies, makeup wipe at the ready. “Why would I think you’re mad?” Samantha shakes her head and steps forwards, closing her eyes and keeping her wine held at chest height, a little like a bride might hold a bouquet, or how her wife sometimes holds her cigarette when she’s looking at something. Valentine stood that way—cigarette between the fingers of her left hand, right loosely gripping left—to examine the view from the balcony of their hotel room in New York. Irene smooths away watery runs of mascara from under Samantha’s eyes.

“It’s my dad,” Samantha tells her quietly, her eyes still closed; Irene wonders if that makes it easier for her to say it. “He’s um. He’s lost—a lot of money.”

“I heard,” Irene says.

“And a business partner. Ja-James. He—my godfather, actually. He was. He—he killed himself.”

“I heard,” Irene says.

Samantha’s mouth seeks out hers. The kiss is salty with tears. They pull apart when Samantha’s hands shake so hard that white wine goes all over Irene’s front; Samantha gives a horrified gasp and Irene looks rather horrified herself and then, somewhere, meeting each other’s horrified gazes turns into helpless, horrified laughter.

Later that week, Valentine arrives at a townhouse in Belgravia in what is the early morning for Valentine and nearly midday for Irene. “Hullo,” Irene says lazily, framed in the doorway and wearing a dress which is white and liquid as milk. “Come to housewarm me?”

“Just let me in, Irene. Please.”

“Whatever you like,” says Irene, closing the door after her and wishing it didn’t taste true; that’s the trouble with Valentine. She’s good at wrenching the truth from her—it comes out of Irene’s mouth before she realises what it is, and by then it’s too late. It’s coppery on her tongue, and she can never take it back as well as she wants to.

“You look artistic,” Irene says as she follows Valentine into the sitting room, hips swaying from side to side. Valentine just scoffs, standing with her arms crossed, and as Irene watches her mouth turns into a dark, tight line, taut enough to tug on something in Irene’s chest; she feels it open and spill out inside her.

She would like to wrap herself around Valentine, and perhaps hold her heart under cold water. Instead, she drops elegantly into an armchair and raises her eyebrows at her. When Valentine says nothing, Irene prompts, “It’s Samantha,”

“I don’t—” Valentine looks up, staring blankly at where the wall meets the ceiling. “Yes. I don’t know what to do.”

“Tell her you love her,” Irene suggests, one hand uncurling in a gentle mid-air movement. “People like that.”

“I didn’t come here for advice.”

“No,” Irene says, “I know.” There’s silence, jaggedly broken by their breathing. “Come here.”

 

 

*

“I watched her from beside the open window, trying to breathe smoke at the street rather than at her. She was shining with August heatwave sweat, naked but for one stocking still incongruously clinging to her. I was wrapped up in her dressing gown with rope marks under it. Too hot, but I didn’t want to be bare. To tell the truth, I was never quite into what she liked, but because it was what she liked, I wanted to do it, over and over again, worse and worse, the unthinkable after the unthinkable, and in the quiet afterwards I’d feel uneasy with myself. In that moment, though, I was feeling uneasy with her.

I hadn’t stepped back to look at her naked, so I hadn’t noticed the bruises before—streaks of unpleasant purple interrupting her skin, and friction burn like a red galaxy over her knees and her right arm, like she’d broken a fall.

“I tripped,” she said lazily, though she wasn’t looking at me looking at her. She drew one leg up and pulled her remaining stocking off, dropping it off the side of the bed.

“Off a cliff?”

“Onto a road.”

I didn’t answer. Instead I watched how the bruises moved as she moved, and suddenly I realised that she was living a whole different life in a whole different world I knew nothing about. “Are you alright?” she asked lazily, her voice like a low current of heat—like we needed more.

“Yeah,” I said. She always wanted to hold onto me after sex. I never really let her—just before and during. I turned my head to blow smoke out of the window. “Irene?”

“Listening.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“Well. Most people are.”

“Jesus!”

She got up, and picked up my cigarette from where I’d squashed it, only half smoked, in the ashtray she kept for me. Then she put it back down again, and picked up my packet. She drew out a new cigarette, touched it to my lower lip until I opened my mouth, let her put it in its place, and let her light it. I wouldn’t have let her come near me—except there was something quietly constructive about the gesture, like she was trying to put me back together. “I love you,” she said, still cupping the flame of my lighter in her hand. “Ever so much.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d said it—it wasn’t even the first time she’d said it to me. I believed it—but it wasn’t the first time I’d believed it, either. I’ve spent far too long trying to work out what was different, why the rawness in her voice was different to the rawness which had been in her voice all the other times, and why it took my heart by the hand and tried to make it understand a language it didn’t really speak that well. I think it might have been the first time that she believed what she was saying. Or it might have just been the heat.”

— **“ _The Self-Portrait_ ”, V. Harper, published 2014.**

 

 

*

**22nd August 2010**

The cab oils its way up to her and pauses there, humming and gleaming in the sunlight as if slick with sweat of its own. She folds herself into it. “Where are we going?” she inquires lazily, not bothering to take her oversized sunglasses off, although they turn everything to sepia and are sweat-slippery against the bridge of her nose. The cabbie gives no response. “Manners cost nothing, you know,” Irene sighs, more for her own pleasure than in hope of getting a response.

They make their way through London, crawling through traffic almost as still as the air. The air conditioning is a blessing which nevertheless dries out Irene’s eyes, and when she tries to open a tinted window, the driver bad-temperedly jabs a button of his own and the window zooms up so quickly she almost loses a finger. She sighs; she touches up her makeup; she sends a text; she defaces the no-smoking sign with her eyeliner; she plays chess against her phone.

Eventually, they slow down, and the door opens, letting in a swathe of fresh air and a man in a suit whom Irene honestly expected to be much taller.

“So,” he says, taking the backward-facing seat nobody wants so that he can meet her eyes, “have you been naughty or nice?” He’s leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, compact and sleek; untouched by the heat. Or rather—Irene corrects, amused at herself—he looks untouched by the heat. There’s no need to fall for her own trick.

“Oh, Jim,” she says, sweet and weary, “no one ever lets me pick option C.”

“Woe is Irene Adler,” says Jim Moriarty, regarding her sadly with big brown eyes. His face is waxy, perhaps too soft at the edges to be exactly handsome, though it’s hard to say for sure what the problem is.

“Woe indeed. Could I point out that it’s not Christmas?” Her thighs are sticking together beneath her black and white sundress.

“You can.” He shrugs. “But I have to thank you for the Christmas present. So I thought I might keep on theme.”

“Efficient.” In response he just raises his hands and goes haa, like to thank her would be too much like modesty, and then he leaves the silence to itself. Irene thinks, very well, he can be quiet for as long as he likes, and picks up her phone again. She’s winning at chess. London slides by in an abstract patchwork of greys and browns.

“You know,” he says eventually, and when she looks at him—she’s been avoiding it with some difficulty—his smile’s slipped, gone wrong, his lip pulled back from his teeth as if he’s hungry or in pain, “you’re supposed to be charming.”

“I’m supposed to be a lot of things, Mr Moriarty.”

“Wasn’t I Jim? Just then? Irene?”

“Do you want to be?” she asks, with her best low-lashed look.

“I want to be. It’s more intimate. Mr Moriarty’s my dad,” he adds, as if he’s just remembered that fact. Irene’s eyebrows shape a politely surprised question; not a fake name, then? “No, not really. Would I really tell you that? But you get the idea.”

“I do,” she says, as if it’s a sudden revelation, meeting his wide brown stare once more. Her mouth curves like a scythe. “Jim. You know, I didn’t expect you to be Irish.”

“I didn’t expect you to be from, uh. Sheffield?”

“Are you trying to build suspense or just trying to remember my file?”

Jim stares at her with his mouth slightly open, revealing the soft pink of his tongue. The first laugh shakes him like he’s not expecting it—then again—and then again, until they’re rolling thick and fast but separate, rough staccato bursts of amusement—“You think—you think we keep _records_? She thinks I keep records! _God_!” Irene feels her own smile go wrong, just for a second. When the laughter ceases to shake him he reaches out and takes her hand. His palm is soft. “Because—you do, don’t you. Irene. You’re _organised_.” He strokes the back of her hand. It’s fatherly. She lets the strain in her shoulders slowly unwind, looking right into his eyes; wariness tugging on fascination, tinged with horror. None of it is exactly false. It’s all in her, all possibly true. It’s just a matter of presenting the right kind of face. “You keep records, and you have schedules. Despite all that Versace and Valentino you’re up bright and early and you never let anyone get in the way of what you want to do. And that’s why you’re here.”

“You said you were planning on thanking me.”

“So I am. I mean, that was impressive. Take one nasty businessman, blackmail him into a position where he has to do the impossible—bankrupt his own company and fake his own death—and leave a lovely little trail of breadcrumbs right to the man who could fix that up for him. You played that one nicely, Irene.” His thumb is still moving gently over her knuckles.

“Out of curiosity, where did you send him?” she asks, thinking _it was really that easy to catch your attention_ in giddy spirals, and looking rather archly disconnected. He doesn’t seem to hear her.

“Isn’t his goddaughter weepy since he died, and since daddy had to declare bankruptcy?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Yeah.” He just about tosses her hand back to her, throwing himself back in his seat. He’s not wearing his seatbelt—but then neither is she. It would interrupt the flow of her dress. “She’s only your wife in law.” He looks like he’s chewing his tongue for a second. “Valentine Harper. I’ve read her books.”

“Oh?” Irene asks, turning on a low level glow, as if she’s proud.

“Boring.”

She hates men who are bored of everything, she thinks, letting her smile slip uncertainly like she gives a damn what he thinks of Val’s books, and can’t taste the threat that’s lying in the air. She’s known a few men like that. They wait for fun to find them, or they take out their boredom on whatever’s in front of them. At least she makes her own entertainment. She doesn’t have many virtues, so she grabs them where she can find them and makes what she can of them; she can say with a hard-held certainty that she doesn’t let herself get bored.

“I like them,” she says.

Jim smiles.

“Naughty, nice,” he lists, “and option C, _Irene_. Do you know what this is?”

“A waste of my time, so far.”

“You are adorable. This is recruitment. We want you on the team. We’re impressed by your spunk, drive and originality, and we think you’re cute. Well. I say we, I mean me. That trick with Jamie Macmillan? That was, mmm, nice. But it was so small, Irene. So here’s your thank you. Come work for me.”

The car purrs and rattles onwards. Irene smiles politely. “Is that naughty or nice?”

“That’s option C; you and me.”

“What happens if I say no?” she asks, and Jim shrugs, then leans over and opens the car door. It swings outward. Irene holds her bag tighter in her lap at the sudden scream of air rushing by them, her hair and dress rippling in the wind; she manages to get her fingers unclenched by the time he’s looking at her.

“You’re welcome to walk away from the position,” he yells cheerfully over the roar, “though I’d be sad to see you go.”

She stares at him, and her mouth twists up because she can’t very well look scared.

If she throws herself out of the cab, she might not die. She might not even be terribly badly injured, if she can fall well enough, and as a gymnast, she thinks she can. But the important thing is that there is a chance: Jim Moriarty doesn’t take chances when he wants them dead.

It’s not really the time to be thinking about marriage, but she is, the wind whipping at her face as she stares out at the blurring road, watching him watch her from the corner of her eye. She’s thinking about the marriage as a way to control love, and about contracts as a way to control everything, and about how business is just making people want to give you things.

“I’ve got a job,” she says, as a warning, and (she knew it, can feel the car slow slightly—) the gravel rises up to meet her and her left side explodes in pain, but then the second car comes roaring at her like something straight from hell; the scream is ripped from her throat as she throws herself out of its path—

Then the road is empty save for Irene Adler on her side on the tarmac, curled up around her bag, shaking and gravel-burnt and blindingly alive.

She claws herself up off the ground, then sits on the pavement, breathing until she can breathe without telling herself to. “Creep,” she says eventually, but then her smile splits open like the cuts on her arms and legs, red and wide.

She vandalised the no-smoking sign with her number before he even got in. He’ll call, because he’s going to have to find some new way to try and keep her where he can see her. And he won’t be talking employment.

Getting to her feet is an adventure in disorientation. The world is coming to her in flashes—buildings reel above her, looming, and then she’s staggering, the ground moving up and then down again, then her hand is flat against the cold of a wall and she’s propping herself up—but flashes are alright. That’s how she lives. She’s not a broken person; she works just fine. She just does life in fragments. (She breathes in, and out, and makes the world crystallise around her). Fragments to feed a whole. She can live fragmented. It’s safest.

Moriarty will give her excitement, Moriarty will try and play her like most men in suits do and will think he’s being clever and new about it; she’ll _pick his bones_ , she thinks dizzily. Creep. But he has his place in her life now—his compartment to stay locked in. Like Samantha, glittering tearily and clutching her wine. Samantha needs her, and she needs to be needed. James Macmillan, he had a fragment of her exposed to him, because no one else had an empire handy for Irene to turn into rubble because she wanted to lure bigger fish into the ruins.

Valentine. The fragment of her life which belongs to Valentine scares her, because everyone else is renting space on her terms, while Valentine has invaded, and Irene has welcomed it with open arms.

The pain has started to leak in through her bubble of shock and adrenalin. Irene slides down the wall, and decides she should probably call an ambulance.

 

 

*

**29th August 2010**

“I love you,” Irene hears herself say. “Ever so much.”

And she does. This part of her life has taken up residence in her heart, so that every beat brings it back to her mind; but it’s only a part of her life. The heat between her hands is uncomfortable; she flicks the lighter off and puts it on the windowsill, beside Valentine’s ashtray and the packet of Pall Mall Irene keeps in her bedside table now; tiny monuments to Valentine’s presence.

“I’m going to leave Samantha,” Valentine says, like that’s in any way an appropriate response, and Irene feels a wave break inside her; one crashing release of tension.

The affair ends. Right then. She feels it flicker out. She almost sags to the floor. Of course, she doesn’t—she is in perfect control of her body, which is why she can make it do things like fling itself out of moving cars and scale anything in sight and imply things she’s never said and take Valentine’s cigarette from her mouth to press their lips together. She kisses like it’s not goodbye.

“Not if she leaves you first,” Irene says as the kiss breaks, and she feels, rather than sees, Valentine still.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh God.” Slowly, “You—”

Irene feels an apology ready itself, and then doesn’t bother making the effort to shove it out of her mouth; she’s too tired, suddenly, and there’s no need to be dishonest on top of everything.

 

 

*

“She wasn’t surprised, I imagine, though they came out of nowhere; she probably laughed at them, with her mouth turned up towards the sky. She said, “Do get out of my way," because she knew what was going to happen and she'd already scripted her last words, even though her audience weren't terribly appreciative. One of them grabbed her, and the other drove a fist into her stomach. She fell to the tarmac in a nasty succession of thuds and cracks, runs splitting and racing up her stockings when her knees hit the pavement. She gasped for breath, and found it lacking.

The rest, as they say, is news.

They left her bleeding in her party dress, on her way either to or from a party—like she always seemed to be—with her head literally kicked in. Later, pictures surfaced. A medical technician who happened to have his iPhone handy lost his job over them. Her ruined face was unrecognisable. I saw it over and over, printed out in glossy full colour and doing the rounds on the internet; on various forums, conspiracy theorists debated their veracity, delicately dissecting her broken, red remains and producing amateur autopsy results. I could never get anything from the pictures but that she wasn’t Irene Adler anymore; that trying to scan them for some deeper meaning to Irene Adler’s life would yield absolutely no result, because she was long gone.”

— **_“The Self-Portrait”_ , V. Harper, published 2014.**

 

 

*

**29th November 2014**

She’s seen rather a lot of airports at three AM lately. She thinks she’s the only person in the world who likes airports. There’s this wonderful sense of moving onwards. An anonymity. (She thinks, carrying documents with a fake name). Those big windows, and those dormant metal beasts gleaming outside, peeling one after the other from their ranks to drag themselves at improbable angles into the sky. This one is—she checks her boarding pass. A bad sign. Right. This one is in Munich, and her flight has been delayed.

She curls up in her seat and sighs. She does like airports. It’s just hard, sometimes, to remember it.

Five minutes pass. She’s not hesitating. She’s just doing the mathematics of her own desperation, trying to see if it’s worth it.

“Can I buy that?” she asks.

The student opposite her jumps, and nearly spills her airport coffee all over his fashionably scruffy jeans. “Uh—the latte?” he asks, American accent straining his vowels.

“The book in your bag, dear,” she corrects him in an indulgent purr, immediately feeling better for being able to make him stare at her in a mix of fascination and nervousness. She tucks her feet up under her and smiles. (She can see him fit her into a story; she’s rich, wrapped in fur, dark bruise-coloured lipstick; all in black like she’s mourning something; tired underneath her makeup; young widow, no—unfaithful husband). “Valentine Harper’s latest.”

“The—um.”

“You’ve read it,” she points out. The pages are rumpled, and it’s not old enough to be secondhand yet, surely.

“I really...”

“Fifty euro?” she offers.

“...Sure.”

He holds out the book, and she slips him the money, saying, “Thanks, darling.” A flight is announced in German, then in English. It’s not hers. She opens the book.


End file.
